Bobba

“Moving on,” I said as Nexxali and Sage began whisper-chatting to each other with conspiratorial looks. “Laika, I suggest you pick something fruity if you’re overwhelmed. Mango is safe.”

“Mmm… What does mango taste like?” the prad girl asked.

“Sunshine in fruit form!” Sage explained jovially. “Sweet n’ a tad tangy. Like a hug from a tropical beach!”

“Beaches don’t hug,” Galateya commented, violet eyes sliding across the menu.

“They hug your feet,” Sage countered.

“Sand is an abrasive mineral aggregate. It does the opposite of hugging.”

“You’re thinking about this too hard, T-buns.”

“I am thinking about it the correct amount. Sand is a grinding agent.”

The fox-soul barista waited patiently, pen poised.

“Strawberry classic for moi,” Sage declared. “And for the Wendigo and her adorkable hostage…”

“Boyfriend,” I stated.

“Fiancé,” Shady corrected at exactly the same time.

“I’ll have… green apple green tea with extra tapioca,” I said. “Shades?”

“Something… black,” Shady stated, not even looking at the menu, mostly dedicated to smooshing me and probably death-glaring at everyone who dared to look my way.

“We have charcoal latte with black sesame boba!” Clementine offered.

“Is it actually charcoal?” Shady considered.

“Activated charcoal!”

“Kay. I’ll take four of the biggest size cups.” Shady stated dismissively.

“I will have the matcha with coconut milk,” Galateya read from the menu. “And the tapioca pearls on the side, please. Separately. In a small dish.”

“You want your boba on the side?” Clementine asked.

“I wish to… examine my food before consuming it.”

Sage leaned over and loudly stage-whispered to Clementine: “She’s new to Earth. Roll with it.”

“I want this one!” Nexxali announced dramatically, pointing at a menu item labeled “MEGA BOBA SUPREME - 32oz.” The description listed seven flavors of boba, three types of jelly, and a tiny paper umbrella. “With extra everything. All the spheres you have. Every single sphere and cube! I see there’s cube options!”

”…All of them?” Clementine asked.

“Every jelly-shape, yes!”

“Right then. And for you?” Clementine turned to Laika.

“And, uhm,” Laika said shyly. “The… mango one? Please?”

“Mango milk tea with regular boba! Got it.” Clementine beamed and bounced away.

Sage pulled out her phone, which was almost entirely buried in fox stickers. “Group photo time!”

“Considering that we’re in a dream, what’s even the point of photos?” I asked.

“Bro, ‘das square tater thinking.” Sage rolled her blue eyes at me. “The foxes are going to send the pics to an Astral receiver artifact connected to an IRL printer that’ll print the photos. I design all of my sexy shirts at night in the Yesterweave too. When we wake up we’ll have these pics IRL that I can pin to me wall and cover ‘em in heart stickers n’ fox runes.”

“Ah,” I said. “Well then, consider me impressed.”

“Damn right, I’m impresso,” Sage bobbed. “Everyone scrunch!”

“I’m not scrunching,” Shady announced.

“You’re already scrunching Ash into your ribcage,” Nexxali pointed out.

“He’s comfortable.”

“I’m losing circulation in my left arm,” I reported.

“Acceptable casualties,” Shady stated. She released me slightly and then grabbed and wiggled and started to knead my left arm.

Sage held the phone at arm’s length and turned it sideways, angling for maximum group coverage as she leaned out of the booth. “Okay! Scary faces! T-bun, impress me with yo scariest expression.”

Galateya furrowed her brow very slightly, showing a bit of teeth.

“Such terror,” Sage deadpanned at the Taniwha. “Like a librarian who found an overdue book. Laika! Scary!”

Laika bared her dog chompers in an attempt at a snarl. She looked like a puppy who’d been told “no” about a sock.

“Subarashi. Nexxy?”

Nexxali yawned, showing her full set of Serval fangs. Her eyes remained half closed as she leaned against me and Shady. “I’m scary.”

“You look sleepy.”

“Sleepy me IS scary. Ask anyone who’s woken me from a nap. They don’t survive the experience.”

“Shady?”

Shady didn’t change her expression at all on the screen. She simply existed. As she was. Looming above me like a gigantic, black, fuzzy, antlered, skull-grin tarantula.

“Ten outta ten, would flee screaming!” Sage snapped the photo approvingly. “Aight, now wholesome faces!”

“No,” Shady said.

Nexxali offered a languid thumbs up.

Galateya produced a soft smile.

Laika smiled and wagged her tail extra-hard.

Judging by the view displayed on Sage’s screen, I looked exhausted, which was a bit silly considering I was asleep right now.

Why did I look exhausted in my own dream? Then again, this was a memory of a year ago me struggling with insomnia due to the meds I was taking for over a decade that kept my dreams nightmare-free.Nightmare free dreams…Did Shady leave a piece of herself in my dreams? Hrmmm.

Sage took seven more photos in rapid succession, each with different demands. “Duck lips! Blue Steel! Prom photo! Existential dread! Now, everyone point at Ash!”

Fingers, claws, and paws pointed at me from various angles.

“Why the me pointery?” I wondered idly, partially distracted with personal nightmare evaluation.

“Because you’re the main character here, bruh,” Sage said, as if explaining gravity to a little kid. “The MC gets pointed at. S’ da narrative law!”

“I’m the MC, hum?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “What’s my story about then? And who’s writing it?”

Sage pursed her lips. “You ask too many questions, mister. N’ the more answers I provide, the more the narrative coherence wobbles. Leave the fourth wall alone!” she added, making the overly expressive ‘leave Britney alone’ meme face.

I chortled. “So, you know the answers then?”

“Yes!” Sage grinned, dramatically wiggling her rainbow-nails then fell silent for dramatic effect. “For within this juicy Yesterweave fold, I’m the narrator and waifu number four. Tun tun tun.”

“Why aren’t you the main character of your weave-thing?” I demanded.

“I’m the main character in other stories,” she replied. “Can’t be the main character everywhere at the same time, bruh! That’d get boring.”

“What other stories?” I asked.

“As suggested by simple mathematical probability, there are a lot of stories playing out across the Omniverse,” Sage stated with a cheeky grin. “With lots of cute foxes. Whenever you see a fox, that’s me. Is an easy Easter egg. Wink wink nudge nudge.”

“Is that a technical term?” I asked, amused by her chattering. “Why not just ‘multiverse’?”

“The Omniverse is a finite boundary universe network linked by Deathmoth Omnid gates and Astral radios,” Sage replied. “Duh!”

“Uh-huh.”

The drinks arrived on a tray carried by the barista.

Laika received her mango tea and held it with both paws, intently studying the orange liquid and the dark spheres settled at the bottom through the glass.

“Do I… eat the spheres or drink around them?” she asked.

“Both,” I said. “You suck them up through the straw.”

Laika positioned the fat straw between her canine teeth and took a tentative pull.

Her eyes went massive, ears shot straight up and the tail became a blur.

“Mfph!” She chewed the boba, cheeks working. She swallowed. “There are MORE of them in here!”

“Many more,” I confirmed.

“It’s like a treasure hunt in a cup!” She took another enthusiastic pull, cheeks puffing with captured balls. “Mmm! Mm mm mmph!”

“Slow down,” Galateya cautioned. “You’ll choke.”

“Mrrph!” Laika protested through a mouthful of tapioca.

Galateya admired her tapioca on the small side dish. She picked one up between two fingers, held it to the light, rotated it this and that way, and then placed it delicately on the slightly-longer than human tongue.

She chewed once. Twice. A third time with curious deliberation.

“The texture is…” she paused, searching for the right word. “Gelatinous. With a slight resistance at the center. The flavor profile is… primarily starch with a faint sweetness.”

“Are you performing an autopsy on a tapioca ball?” Sage observed. “Drink your boba properly, dragon-bun. Is better in the drink.”

“I am… evaluating the boba.” Teya shrugged, dropping a single tapioca ball into her tea and then sucking it out with a straw. “And judging whether it is better inside the drink or outside it.”

Nexxali had already sucked up a third of her Mega Boba Supreme. She held the enormous cup like a chalice, sipping with the languid satisfaction of a queen at a wine tasting. The striped tail swayed behind her in slow, contented arcs, swatting my left side.

“Yum. Bobbah’s like little pockets of joy exploding in your mouth. Tiny, edible hopes. Mmmmm,” Nexxali declared, tapping the cup with a claw, “Better than three quarters of the food I’ve eaten in twenty years of military service.”

“What’s the quarter of food that was decent?” I asked.

“Food from some Citadel towns is decent,” Nexxali said. “Plus… un-seasoned UwU are aight.” She took another long draw of her bubble tea.

“Who even seasons the UwUs?” I asked. “Aren’t they supposed to taste however you want them to taste?”

“Not entirely. The Corpse Seekers season the UwUs… and they season themselves by rolling around the dragonheart reactor,” Nexxali clarified. “The problem is that in dimensions flavored with too much Entropy or too many dungeons, they often don’t taste as you want them to. The nearest dungeon radiance infects the flavor of mana drawn in by the reactor, skewering the UwUs towards some gross-edge particularity. Like yeah, in a dungeon-infected dimension an UwU would taste like your favorite food, sure, but also gets spiced with shit like… Metal, stone or whatever random ass conceptual alignment the nearest dungeon projects into the Astral.”

Shady reached around me with one long arm, snagged the first cup of her drinks, and took a sip through the straw. I felt her jaw working against the top of my head as she chewed the black sesame boba.

“Adequate,” she pronounced.

“Such praises,” Nexxali chuckled.

“Do you enjoy it or is it merely adequate?” Galateya pressed.

Shady took another sip. Then another. Then drained half the cup in one pull.

“It’s aight,” she repeated.

“She likes it,” I translated.

“No.”

“Your tail is wagging.” I pointed out.

“Wendigo tails do not wag. They sway with menacing intent.”

“It’s wagging, Shades.”

Her iridescent-edge, black feather-tipped tail froze mid-swing and then swatted me. “I will bite your ear off.”

“Promises, promises,” I smiled, recalling a far smaller antler-less shady threatening to bite off my various body parts but never quite delivering on such. Her long, wet tongue suddenly licked the top of my ear making me shudder ever so slightly.

Galateya dumped the rest of her tapioca into her tea and began sipping it normally. “Thank you for taking us here, Sanguine.”

“Welcomeses!” the fox bobbed.

“Hey Teya,” I said. “Did you eat UwUs in the time bubble too then?”

“No,” she said. “The time bubbles don’t have dragonheart reactor cores.”

“What do they have for food then?” I wondered.

“They have a central… feeding tree that produces… flesh fruit.” She frowned slightly. “Approximately every six hours a fruit falls to the ground, and… cracks open, releasing flesh-spider seeds. They scatter and require chasing, killing and… devouring. They provide… meager experience points and gradual level growth. The Frontenachii spawnlings generally emerge from within their bubble with Level twenty core skills.”

“Lemme guess,” Nexxali commented. “You didn’t make it to twenty?”

“No,” Galateya sighed, lowering her eyes. “I did not. I am far behind my sisters and… I have no idea if it’s even possible to level up on a linear world.”

“No fret T-bun!” Sage petted the dragon. “We’ll get you many magical things to eat! You’ll level up in no time at all with mah fantastique foxxyrrific guidance!”

Laika graduated from cautious sipping to full commitment. Orange mango residue stained the fur around her muzzle as her tail maintained its frantic metronome pace against the booth cushion.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever had,” she announced between pulls. “Better than steam-vent-heated snow. Better than dumpster bread. Better than the piroshki! Mmmmm.”

“It is… rather nice,” Galateya agreed.

“Jeez such sheltered-ness,” Sage sighed. “Who’s for upping Laika and Teya’s sheltered standards? Raise your pawses or feetses.”

Everyone raised their hands. Even Shady.

Sage raised a zentai-suit-covered foot in the air, ‘cat-about-to-lick itself’ style and wiggled her toes at me. It looked ridiculous and also needlessly hot.

“The votes are in,” Sage stated with a fake-serious expression. “The motion carries. The dog and dragon will be taken to the best nom-places our Earth can offer and immersed in the wonders of our culture.”

“Can I be immersed in human nom-wonders too?” Nexxali asked.

“Yes. Nom wonder magic fox-bus ride for everyone except Shadi-o n’ A-man,” Sage pointed a finger at me and Shady. “For these two introverted nerds desire privacies to make out in a dark closet all day long!” The fox bubbled into cheeky giggling at her own commentary.

“Oi,” Shady growled. “Do you want your face chewed off? Which part of me is nerdy?”

“The part that loves 90s monster movies,” I commented. “And board games. And…”

Shady’s paw covered my mouth. She was probably making an embarrassed-bothered face above me because Laika, Sage and Nexxali laughed.

“You have a nice laugh, Laika,” Galateya said softly.

“I… thank you?” Laika voiced, hiding her face behind her glass.

“Oh my god, they’re both so shy,” Sage whispered loudly to Nexxali, who snorted into her Mega Supreme.

“Let them be,” I said.

“I’m not doing anything!” the fox stated. “I’m merely observing two adorable cuties discovering they can make sounds of happiness in public! This is nature documentary content! Sir Daveed Atterborough would totes narrate this!”

Galateya shook her dark hair, clearly amused but trying to hide it behind a serious facade.

“The bubble-born dragon extends a verbal olive branch,” Sage added in a deep, posh accent, “The stray dog, unaccustomed to such social overtures, retreats behind her glass. A tentative bond forms over fermented leaf juice.”

Pink scales briefly flashed visibly along Teya’s human neck and cheeks. “I regret complimenting anyone.”

“Too late,” Sage said. “The compliment has been deployed. You can’t un-compliment. It’s in the wild. It’s breeding. Soon there will be herds of compliments.”

“Can we change the topic?” Galateya pursed her lips.

“Aight, dwagon-boss-bum. Topic change initiated!” Sage bounced in her seat, orange-red tail fluttering behind her. “Let’s play a learnin’ game!”